Securitzation and Irak PAUL ROE

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DOI: 10.1177/0967010608098212 2008; 39; 615 Security Dialogue

Paul Roe Decision to Invade Iraq

Actor, Audience(s) and Emergency Measures: Securitization and the UK's

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Actor, Audience(s) and EmergencyMeasures: Securitization and the UK’s

Decision To Invade Iraq

PAUL ROE*

Central European University, Budapest, Hungary

The concept of securitization has produced a considerable amount ofdebate over the meaning of security. However, far less attention hasbeen paid to the role of audiences and their relationship to actors inthe securitization process. Informed by the work of Thierry Balzacq(2005), and through analysis of the decision of the UK government tojoin with the USA in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, in this article I showthat although the general public can indeed play a valuable role inproviding an actor with ‘moral’ support concerning the ‘securityness’of an issue, more crucial, however, is the ‘formal’ support provided byparliament concerning the ‘extraordinaryness’ of the means necessaryto deal with it. My argument is thus that securitization can in this waybe seen as a distinct two-stage process marked by a ‘stage of identifi-cation’ and a ‘stage of mobilization’.

Keywords securitization • audience • Iraq • weapons of massdestruction • Tony Blair

ACCORDING TO THE SO-CALLED COPENHAGEN SCHOOL, the‘securityness’ of an issue is defined by the intersubjective establish-ment (between actor and audience) of an existential threat, which

legitimates actors to deal with that threat using extraordinary means. In thisway, the claim that ‘we can regard “security” as a speech act’ (Wæver, 1995:55) has served to locate Ole Wæver and his cohorts at the centre of debateover the very meaning of security.1 As part of this debate, Olav Knudsen(2001: 358) writes that, through the concept of securitization, the CopenhagenSchool has tried to shift the focus of security away from the state and awayfrom the study of war. Wæver, Barry Buzan and Jaap de Wilde ‘consider the“military core” of security studies as something to be avoided. They removethemselves from the military sector in such a way that they also lose touch

© 2008 PRIO, www.prio.noSAGE Publications, http://sdi.sagepub.com

Vol. 39(6): 615–635, DOI: 10.1177/0967010608098212

1 See, for example, McSweeney (1996: 81–94), Huysmans (1998: 479–505), Eriksson (1999: 311–330).



with the core element of our field, namely large-scale conflict’ (Knudsen,2001: 362). Although I do not wholly support Knudsen’s point that membersof the Copenhagen School necessarily ‘remove themselves’ from the militarysector of security,2 I do nevertheless share Knudsen’s concern with a concen-tration on securitization in terms of the actual production of ‘conflict broughtto the point of mass violence, subjection, or submission’ (Knudsen, 2001: 358).In particular, my interest in this article lies in the role that ‘audience’ plays inthe decision on the part of states to mobilize and deploy armed forces.

The Copenhagen School and other so-called second-generation securitiza-tion scholars (Balzacq, 2005; Stritzel, 2007) have been keen to underscore themultiplicity of securitizing audiences. Among these, the general public isgenerally assumed to play an important role, especially in liberal dem-ocracies: ‘the ideal situation regarding “national” security in a democraticsociety’ (Wæver, 2003: 12).3 More specifically, Thierry Balzacq (2005: 185)notes that publics valuably provide their governments with ‘moral’ support,but not with ‘formal’ support that ‘mandates governments to adopt a specificpolicy’. In keeping with Balzacq’s formulation, and prompted by Wæver’s(2003: 26) remarks that ‘more case studies’ concerning the relationshipbetween actor and audience (and emergency measures) are necessary fordeveloping a ‘more general formulation’ of the securitization concept, myintention here is duly to concentrate on the role of the masses (as set againstother audiences) as part of the securitization process. In doing so, however,my fundamental claim is that a focus on the role of securitizing audiencesalso shows securitization as a distinct two-stage process. Out of keeping withBalzacq, my contention is that although a given audience may well agreewith the securitizing actor as to the ‘securityness’ of a given issue, this self-same audience may also disagree over the ‘extraordinaryness’ of the meas-ures proposed. Such a situation is not an example of failed securitization (asthe audience did not reject the issue as ‘security’), but nor is it a successfulsecuritization, as the means necessary to deal with the issue are not also inter-subjectively established.

In the first part of the article, I briefly set out the securitization concept, firstlooking at the relationship between actor and audience before moving on todiscuss the legitimation of emergency measures. Here I make the claim thatsecuritization can conceptually be revised in terms of what I call the ‘stage ofidentification’ and the ‘stage of mobilization’. Next, through the case ofBritain’s decision to join with the USA in the war against Iraq in 2003, I show

616 Security Dialogue vol. 39, no. 6, December 2008

2 Although the Copenhagen School does indeed not want to ‘retreat to the military core’, the military sectoris nonetheless fundamental, inasmuch as its ‘logic’ is replicated in other dimensions of security (Buzan,Wæver & de Wilde, 1998: 4–5). In other words, while the military dimension may not always be the mostsalient, its sectoral dynamics remain core, in that they are constitutive of the securitization process inother such sectors.

3 Wæver (2003: 26) is particularly keen to see the notion of audience further addressed from ‘more diversecultural settings’. On this point, see also Collins (2005), Jackson (2006), Wilkinson (2007).



that although the danger of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) wasintersubjectively established between the securitizing actor (the governmentled by Prime Minister Tony Blair) and several securitizing audiences (includ-ing the British public at large), initially this did not create a platform fromwhich it was possible to legitimize the kind of emergency measures that Blairdeemed necessary. The general public, for example, agreed with the primeminister that Saddam Hussein’s regime posed a threat (stage of identifica-tion), but did not agree that the use of military force, in invading Iraq anddeposing Saddam, was indeed the required response. Such emergencymeasures were only made possible following the subsequent intersubjectiveestablishment of means (stage of mobilization) with both the ParliamentaryLabour Party (PLP) and opposition parties. Accordingly, when it came downto actually ‘doing’ security in this way, although the masses did not mattertoo much, Parliament certainly did.

The Concept of Securitization

For the Copenhagen School, a security issue is something that requires prior-ity over all others. This is because ‘if we do not tackle this problem, every-thing else will be irrelevant (because we will not be here or free to deal withit in our own way)’ (Buzan, Wæver & de Wilde, 1998: 24). In articulating asecurity threat, an actor thereby claims the special right to handle the issueusing extraordinary means. Thus:

If by means of an argument about the priority and urgency of an existential threat thesecuritizing actor has managed to break free of procedures or rules that he or she wouldotherwise be bound by, we are witnessing a case of securitization. (Buzan, Wæver & deWilde, 1998: 25)

Thus, securitization is determined only in hindsight – that is, if security logicis ex post facto apparent. According to Roxanne Lynne Doty (1999: 80), thismeans the identification of ‘a sequence of stimuli and responses . . . [the] logicof challenge–resistance/defence–escalation–recognition/defeat’. According-ly, although Wæver’s use of the speech act theoretically opens up the possi-bility for an almost indefinite widening of the security agenda, in practicalterms the imposition of this ‘traditional’ logic serves well to maintain thefairly narrow nature of the securitization concept.

Although securitization has generated much debate, in particular withregard to the concept’s speech act methodology,4 somewhat surprisingly farless attention has been devoted to the relationship between actor and audi-ence. In a recent piece, Holger Stritzel (2007: 362) writes that the Copenhagen

Paul Roe Actor, Audience(s) and Emergency Measures 617

4 See, for example, Hansen (2000), Williams (2003).



School has not conceptualized this relationship ‘very clearly’. Indeed, Wæver(2003: 26) himself notes the relative neglect of the audience as an ‘internalproblem to be worked on’.

Actor and Audience in Securitization

As Buzan, Wæver & de Wilde (1998: 31) make clear, ‘securitization is notdecided by the securitizer but by the audience of the security speech act: Doesthe audience accept that something is an existential threat to a shared value?’Although the security speech act is thus ‘negotiated between securitizer andaudience’, the role of the audience is crucial, inasmuch as it is the audiencethat grants the securitizer ‘permission to override the rules that would other-wise bind’ (Buzan, Wæver & de Wilde, 1998: 26).

In instances of ‘institutionalized securitization’, however, the role of audi-ence is at best marginalized or at worst excluded. Most visibly in the militarysector, ‘persistent or recurrent’ threats are often institutionalized, with stateshaving ‘built up standing bureaucracies, procedures and military establish-ments to deal with those threats’ (Buzan, Wæver & de Wilde, 1998: 27–28).The military sector of security often carries with it a certain degree of legiti-macy in terms of the government’s – or, more precisely, the military’s – abil-ity to act without the consent of the general public and/or other securitizingaudiences. This is particularly so in the case of pre-emptive or covert militarystrikes – for example, where the need exists for operational details to be keptsecret because of the danger of revealing vital information to the enemy.Moreover, a previously successful securitization may legitimize a furtherseries of measures over a given period of time.

Operation Desert Fox is a case of institutionalized securitization. Thisoperation, which began on 16 December 1998, was the Blair-led govern-ment’s first military intervention. Desert Fox entailed four days of airstrikesagainst Iraq by the USA and the UK, and was justified through reference toSaddam Hussein’s continued refusal to cooperate with UN weapons inspec-tors. American UN inspectors had already been expelled from Iraq inNovember 1997, and by August of the following year the entire UN teamhad been denied access to inspection sites. Following a brief period of UNnegotiations with Iraq, chief UN weapons inspector Richard Butler issued areport on 15 December, in which he made clear that no progress had beenmade either over disarmament or in accounting for Iraq’s prohibitedweapons programme.

The following day, airstrikes were carried out without the agreement of theBritish public (and Parliament). The intersubjective establishment of threat,which justified such emergency measures, had, it was argued, already beenestablished in 1990, immediately prior to the first Gulf War. As Jason Ralph(2005: 20) points out, the case put forward by the USA and the UK was that




UN resolutions 1154 (March 1998) and 1205 (November 1998) had ‘implicitlyrevived the authorization to use force given in Resolution 678 (1990)’.

Institutionalized securitizations aside, however, the presumption is that(liberal democratic) governments ask their publics (and, indeed, their parlia-ments) to accept both the identification of threat and the mobilization ofmeans required to deal with it.5

Thierry Balzacq demonstrates the importance of the masses with referenceto the ‘Popish Plot’ of 1678. The alleged goals of this plot were the massacreof England’s Protestants, the assassination of King Charles and the installa-tion of the king’s Catholic brother, James, Duke of York, on the throne in hisplace. For Balzacq, the successful securitization of the plot (which resulted intreason trials, summary executions and eventually a Catholic witch-huntthroughout the country) was dependent not only on the speech acts of thesecuritizing actor, Anglican clergyman Titus Oates, but also on the broadercontext of 17th-century England. Here Balzacq (2005: 183) notes two impor-tant factors: at the domestic level, the previous fire of London of 1666, forwhich Catholics were thought to have been responsible, along with theprospect of having a Catholic, James, on the throne; at the international level,the perceived threat from King Louis XIV of France, who ‘had just invadedthe Netherlands and had tightened his hold on Spain’. Taken together,Balzacq asserts, ‘these circumstances made the masses ripe for persuasion’.

In this article, my own concern rests not so much with the speech act’scongruence with what Balzacq (2005: 173) calls ‘external context’, but morewith the role of the general public and other audiences in being able to legiti-mize extraordinary means. Returning momentarily to the Popish Plot, it isapparent that Oates and his fellow securitizing actor Dr Israel Tonge suc-ceeded in whipping-up anti-Catholic sentiment, most immediately amongProtestant congregations in and around London. The masses were easily per-suaded of the Catholic threat to the throne and to England. However, prior tothis articulation of threat, Oates and Tonge did not carry with them the kindof legitimacy required to speak on behalf of the masses (the Protestantmasses, that is). It was through the very process of trying to securitize thePopish Plot that the two men successfully convinced a significant enoughnumber of people to validate their purported claims. The legitimacy thussecured by Oates and Tonge was enough to gain a platform to speak onbehalf of that audience, but not enough to actually deal with the issue byextraordinary means. The emergency measures deemed necessary to put anend to the plot – the arrest, torture and trial of suspected plotters and, funda-mentally, the attempted enactment of the Exclusion Bill of 1679 – were the


5 I do acknowledge the security speech act as alternatively representing a more ‘constitutive dynamic’, onewhereby the act itself not only imbues the speaker with authority (which I deal with as part of the nextsection) but at the same time in itself establishes the relevant audience. Further reflection on this point,however, is outside the specific focus of the present article.



preserve of the king himself and, most of all, of Parliament.6 As such, thosewho needed to be convinced most of Catholic intentions were not the massesbut the institutions of the state.

That the masses are not the only – indeed, sometimes not the most impor-tant – audience to be convinced is, however, neither a new nor a particularlysurprising point to reach. Wæver (2003: 12) acknowledges that their role‘varies according to the political system and the nature of the issue’. Balzacq,moreover, argues that audiences provide securitizing actors with two kindsof support: ‘moral’ and ‘formal’. Although the achievement of both on thepart of the securitizing actor increases the chances of successful securitiza-tion, the two, nevertheless, should not be conflated. According to Balzacq,waging war on the part of the state requires moral support both from thegeneral public and from relevant institutional bodies, such as Parliament,Congress or the UN Security Council. However, it also requires the formalsupport of the institution that actually sanctions the use of force. As Balzacq(2005: 185) thus recognizes, ‘states can do without the UN Security Council,but need the support of their legislative branch to launch a military action’.However, while noting the particular importance of formal support in suchan instance, Balzacq’s (2005: 185) conclusion is that publics (moral support)and parliaments (moral and formal support) are both invariably vital:

Securitizing agents always strive to convince as broad an audience as possible becausethey need to maintain a social relationship with the target individual group. . . . Politicalofficials are responsive to the fact that winning formal support while breaking socialbonds with constituencies can wreck their credibility. That explains why, while seekingformal acquiescence, political officials also cloak security arguments in the semanticrepertoire of the national audience in order to win support.

Further to Balzacq, my argument in this article is not only that securitizingactors may require the support of several audiences, but that the role of audi-ence also serves to reveal securitization as a distinct two-stage process: the‘stage of identification’, where an issue is defined as ‘security’, and the ‘stageof mobilization’, where the responses to that issue are thereafter established.In the stage of identification, with the acquiescence of Protestant congrega-tions Oates and Tonge successfully securitized the Popish Plot. But, in thestage of mobilization they also needed the agreement of Parliament and the king for the Catholic threat to be properly quashed. What this shows isthe importance of the actual employment of emergency measures in defining thesecuritization concept.


6 The Exclusion Bill, which was eventually rejected by the House of Lords and by Charles himself, sought toprevent James, and indeed any Catholic, from ascending to the throne of England.



Emergency Measures

On the one hand, the Copenhagen School writes that ‘by labeling it assecurity, an agent claims a need for and a right to treat it by extraordinarymeans’ (Buzan, Wæver & de Wilde, 1998: 26). That is to say, the intersubjec-tive establishment of (existential) threat necessitates emergency measures.On the other hand, the Copenhagen School also makes clear the following:

We do not push the demand so high as to say that an emergency measure has to beadopted, only that the existential threat has to be argued and gain enough resonance fora platform to be made from which it is possible to legitimize emergency measures . . .that would not have been possible had the discourse not taken the form of existentialthreats. (Buzan, Wæver & de Wilde, 1998: 25)

In other words, the actual employment of emergency measures is not in factneeded to define a successful securitization. This tension in the CopenhagenSchool’s work is recognized also by Alan Collins (2005: 572), who poses thequestion: What if, after having already convinced an audience that an exist-ential threat exists, the securitizing actor does not adopt extraordinary meas-ures ‘and a solution is sought via the political process’? Collins provides twopossible answers. The first is explained thus:

Because the adoption of emergency measures occurs after the issue has become a secu-rity issue it cannot form part of the process of determining if it is a security issue. Theanswer is therefore yes, it is a security issue, because it has been presented and acceptedby the audience as such, and it is this interaction between elite and audience that deter-mines whether something has become a security issue. . . . The decision by the elite toresolve the existential threat through the political process does not mean the issue is lessthreatening, it just means that the actor prefers to pursue a solution through the politicalsystem (Collins, 2005: 573).

The second answer, however, is that

to claim that an issue has become securitized is not only to claim that is has become a secu-rity issue but also to make a claim that the elite has responded by adopting emergencypowers. . . . This means that the term securitized cannot be synonymous with an issuebecoming security because it means more than this; it also reveals that the elite want torespond with measures outside of the normal political process (Collins, 2005: 573).

Making a platform from which it is ‘possible’ to legitimize emergency meas-ures is one thing, while acting, actually putting to use such extraordinarymeans, is quite another. Concentrating on the securitization of the traffickingof narcotics and humans in post-Soviet Central Asia, Nicole Jackson offers upa similar observation: ‘Once an issue is rhetorically adopted, it must affect thedevelopment of policy for it to be effective in practice. Otherwise the activi-ties have only been rhetorically securitized with no practical result’ (Jackson,2006: 313; emphasis added).

‘Rhetorical’ securitization, as Jackson puts it, may or may not be followedby what I might call ‘active’ securitization. That is to say, while the Copen-




hagen School’s conceptualization of securitization requires the acceptance ofsomething’s ‘securityness’, it does not, however, also require the actualemployment of ‘extraordinaryness’, that (military) actions are thereby taken.Iver Neumann (1998) shares this concern, arguing that ‘violization’, the act ofusing military force, the very waging of war, is necessarily different from justthe rhetorical establishment of the condition of war. ‘Security’ is uttered withthe expectation that things will be done, that resources will be mobilized, andthat significant effects, such as violence, will thus be manifest. On its own,rhetorical securitization is indeed of value, inasmuch as it may legitimizecertain actors (like Oates and Tonge), thus changing the structure of relationsbetween agents and/or objects. But, it is active securitization that producesthe logic of challenge–resistance/defence–escalation–recognition/defeat that Doty pertinently mentions. Conceptually, therefore, it is important thatsecuritization encompasses both the stage of identification (rhetorical securi-tization) and the stage of mobilization (active securitization).

My argument here is that the relationship between actor and audience isthus constituted not only in accordance with whether the support required is either moral or formal, but also in accordance with what the audience isbeing asked to agree with: ‘this is a threat’ and/or ‘given that this is a threat,this is what I propose we do about it’. Making much the same point, accord-ing to their model of ‘rhetorical action’ Ronald Krebs & Patrick Jackson (2007:43) claim that while audiences might come to accept the ‘frame’ (the terms inwhich the actor characterizes the issue at hand), they may also decide to rejectits implications (the policy changes that the frame implies). In terms of securi-tization, this suggests that actors may sometimes need to rearticulate threatsin such a way that, over and above the audience’s acceptance of the danger,proposed policy responses also achieve the required level of agreement.

This next section now goes on to highlight the importance of the stages ofidentification and mobilization with regard to the UK’s decision in 2003 tojoin the USA in the invasion of Iraq.

The UK’s Decision To Invade Iraq

Following the First Gulf War, a policy of containment was designed mostlyto enforce the disarmament demands of UN Security Council Resolution 687.However, by the late 1990s, containment was beginning to look ever moreineffective in the face of Saddam Hussein’s continuing defiance. At the timeof Operation Desert Fox in December 1998, Blair was still seeking to defendthe containment policy, but thereafter came under increasing pressure toaddress in particular the tremendous suffering to the Iraqi people that sanc-tions had caused. Accordingly, UN Security Council Resolution 1284, passed




in December 1999,7 was designed to ‘prod’ Saddam into resuming coopera-tion. It established a new monitoring group, UNMOVIC, and demanded thatit be afforded ‘immediate, unconditional, and unrestricted access’ to all areasand facilities (cited in Kampfner, 2004: 153–154). According to Resolution1284, sanctions would be suspended in the event that the Iraqi governmentshould cooperate with UNMOVIC for a continuous period of 120 days. Iraq,however, wanted a resolution that immediately lifted sanctions and rejectedthe resolution.

Following 11 September (2001), the Bush administration quickly made upits mind that containment was never going to work. The worst-case scenarioof a direct link between Al-Qaeda, Iraq and WMD firmly established itself inWashington and became the foundation for war against Iraq in the USA.Blair, however, was slower in his own assuredness of the danger. Indeed, tobegin with, the British prime minister was alarmed by the Bush administra-tion’s linking of terrorism to Saddam Hussein: Britain’s Joint IntelligenceCommittee (JIC) had confirmed to him that Iraq had played no part in the 11September attacks. Blair thus made it clear that the focus should remain onAl-Qaeda and not on Iraq. However, in an emergency session of Parliamenton 14 September 2001, the prime minister told the House of Commons: ‘Ournext issue is weapons of mass destruction’ (quoted in Kampfner, 2004: 157).

By March 2002, the Bush administration had already decided to removeSaddam from power. And, although Blair was still not fully committed tosuch a course of action, over time he had become persuaded that Saddammight, at some point in the near future, make his chemical and biologicalweapons available to terrorist groups. Michael Williams, Special Advisor toNew Labour, was asked to prepare a briefing document for Labour Partymembers on Iraq. The document was presented to a meeting of the PLP on 5March. It described the Iraqi regime as a ‘demonstrable threat to the region’.More specifically: ‘If Iraq’s weapons programmes remained unchecked, Iraqcould redevelop offensive chemical and biological weapons within a veryshort period of time and develop a crude nuclear device in about five years’(cited in Kampfner, 2004: 165). The document concluded that measures mustbe taken to ensure that weapons inspectors were sent back, as the work ofprevious inspectors had ‘contained the regime’s military ambitions’ (cited inKampfner, 2004: 165).

Later that month, an additional document was prepared, based largely onfurther intelligence supplied by the JIC. The new document reiterated thatcontainment had constrained Saddam’s ability to threaten his neighbours;‘that Iraq’s nuclear programme had been effectively frozen, and that biologi-cal and chemical weapons were facing serious restraints’ (Bluth, 2004: 876).However, unlike the previous briefing, the subsequent document expressed


7 Russia, China and France abstained from the vote.



considerable reservations over the continued efficacy of sanctions andrenewed weapons inspections, noting that ‘although containment has held forthe last decade, Iraq has progressively increased its international engagement.Even if the [Goods Review List] makes sanctions more sustainable, the sanc-tions regime could collapse in the long-term’ (cited in Bluth, 2004: 876–877).Making clear that the country still retained ballistic missile capabilities, andthat Saddam could resume production of biological and chemical agents, hadhe not already done so, the document, as Christopher Bluth points out, thusmade it very clear that disarming Iraq, and thus removing the threat to itsneighbours, could only be achieved through regime change: ‘In sum, despitethe considerable difficulties, the use of overriding force in a ground campaignis the only option that we can be confident will remove Saddam and bring Iraqback into the international community’ (cited in Bluth, 2004: 877).

The new document was due be sent to several government departments on25 March. However, among a number of Blair’s advisers it was felt that pub-lication of the document at this time might raise undue alarm among partymembers. The previous day, former culture secretary Chris Smith, a closefriend of the prime minister, had made his concerns known during a televi-sion interview in which he commented that many party colleagues ‘would beworried’ by the proposition of military action against Iraq (quoted inKampfner, 2004: 161–162). Additionally, some senior Labour MPs, who hadbeen shown a draft by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, found the document dis-tinctly lacking in evidence of an increased threat (Kampfner, 2004: 166–167).Its release was postponed.

The following month (April 2002), in a meeting with Bush at the US presi-dent’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, Blair committed himself fully to regimechange in Iraq.8 Thus, over the course of much of the following 12 months,Blair tried to convince both domestically and internationally/supranational-ly not only of the very real danger posed by the existence of WMD in thehands of someone like Saddam Hussein (stage of identification), but at thesame time also of the need to counter the threat through the use of militaryforce (stage of mobilization).

Identification and Non-Mobilization: March 2002–September 2002

From March to September 2002, the Blair-led government sought to persuadetwo main audiences – the British public and the prime minister’s own LabourParty and Cabinet (and, by extension, Parliament) – of the Iraqi threat and thenecessity of military action against Saddam Hussein.


8 I do accept that much of the account of Blair’s action, both leading up to and following the prime minister’smeeting in Crawford, is still very much contested.



Given the high level of mistrust that existed when it came to SaddamHussein himself, the British public was very much disposed to see Iraq asthreatening. However, there remained a great deal of scepticism over gov-ernment claims concerning Iraq’s chemical, biological and nuclear weaponsprogrammes, in particular among traditional Labour voters (O’Malley, 2007:8–11). At the time, public opinion polls did not directly ask respondentsabout the level of the threat. Indirectly, however, the numbers either sup-porting or not supporting military action against Iraq were indicative of thepublic’s attitude towards the question of WMD. According to opinion polls,throughout June, July and August just under half of the population wasopposed to military action, with the number peaking, according to aGuardian/ICM poll, at 50% in the last week of August (Travis, 2002a). Thisreflected both some assuredness about the nature of the current danger, butalso some uncertainty concerning Saddam’s future capabilities and inten-tions. Indeed, again according to Guardian/ICM polling figures, in Septemberopposition to military action increased from 40% to 46%, largely owing to‘Saddam Hussein’s offer to admit weapons inspectors and debates over anew United Nations resolution’ (Travis, 2002b).

In terms of the PLP and Blair’s own cabinet, it is difficult to say with anysimilar degree of accuracy just what level of agreement with the prime min-ister was reached. However, there is evidence to suggest that attitudes moreor less reflected those of the general public. In its recent history, the LabourParty, and particularly those on its left, had been highly critical of US foreignand security policy and had generally displayed great antipathy to the use ofmilitary force (Kennedy-Pipe & Vickers, 2007: 216; O’Malley, 2007: 1–2).Thus, although many in the PLP shared the prime minister’s commitment tobe rid of Saddam, there was also a weight of opinion that the level of dangerposed by WMD had not increased to a level that warranted armed interven-tion (O’Malley, 2007; Hill, 2005). Indeed, disagreement with the governmentover Iraq was clearly demonstrated in September (2002) when 160 Labourbackbenchers signed a motion expressing their disquiet at the prospect ofemploying military means.

Much of the British public agreed with Prime Minister Tony Blair about thethreat posed by a potential reacquisition of WMD capabilities on the part ofSaddam Hussein. Thus, Blair had succeeded (stage of identification) inrhetorically securitizing the situation. But, the public was nonetheless splitover what active securitization (stage of mobilization) thereby entailed.Opinion polls indicate that although just under half of those polled were prepared to acquiesce to Blair’s call for the use of force against Iraq, just abouthalf again were firmly of the mind that necessary means involved rather the strengthening of containment, especially through the readmission ofweapons inspectors.




(Re)Identification and Non-Mobilization: September 2002

In a renewed effort to convince party and public alike of the higher level ofthreat posed by Saddam, on 24 September Blair presented to the House ofCommons a further dossier on Iraqi WMD capabilities. Beginning his pres-entation, based on the report of the weapons inspectors after leaving Iraq inDecember 1998, the prime minister outlined Saddam’s supposed arsenal: 360tonnes of bulk chemical warfare agents, up to 3,000 tonnes of precursorchemicals, growth media sufficient to produce 26,000 litres of anthrax spores,and more than 30,000 special munitions for delivery of chemical and biologi-cal agents, all of which were missing or unaccounted for. Continuing, Blairsaid that Operation Desert Fox had set the programme back, but not ended it.He affirmed that Saddam’s WMD programme was active and growing andthat containment was not working (Kampfner, 2004: 201–202).

Justifying the government’s decision to publish such a document, in hisforeword to the dossier, Blair writes: ‘I believe this issue to be a current andserious threat to the UK national interest’ (Foreign & Commonwealth Office,2002: 3). He continues that the danger posed by the Iraqi regime is not just amatter of increased WMD capabilities (Foreign & Commonwealth Office,2002: 3) but also concerns Saddam’s appalling human rights record:

The threat posed to international peace and security, when WMD are in the hands of abrutal and aggressive regime like Saddam’s, is real. Unless we face up to the threat, notonly do we risk undermining the authority of the UN, whose resolutions he defies, butmore importantly, and in the longer term, we place at risk the lives and prosperity of ourown people. (Foreign & Commonwealth Office, 2002: 4)

In addition, although the dossier itself contained no reference to linksbetween Iraq and Al-Qaeda, many of the speeches that Blair made on thematter also referred to the danger of terrorism (McClean & Patterson, 2006).9

Blair and his government were indeed well aware of the importance ofsecuring the moral support of the masses. Eoin O’Malley (2007: 11) describesthe British government as having been ‘keenly aware of the need to per-suade’, and cites a letter sent at the time in which the UK ambassador toWashington, Sir Christopher Meyer, outlines to US Deputy Secretary ofDefence Paul Wolfowitz that the reason for the publication of the govern-ment dossiers was ‘to be able to take the critical mass of parliamentary andpublic opinion with us’ (cited in O’Malley, 2007: 11). Arguably, however, thereason for publication was not just a matter of maintaining the prime minis-ter’s credibility in the minds of the general public, but also reflected the beliefthat public opinion would likely influence Parliament’s decision to supportor oppose the use of military force (O’Malley, 2007: 12). In other words, getthe moral support and the formal support is also likely to follow.


9 According to McClean & Patterson (2006), between April 2002 and March 2003 out of 24 occasions that Blairspoke about the Iraq problem, 16 of them mentioned ‘terrorism, morality, and biological weapons’.



Although Blair did not need the formal support of many of his Labour MPs(as it was possible to carry a vote in favour of war with the support of a num-ber of the main opposition Conservatives), without their moral support hisability to continue as party leader would have been seriously compromised.The credibility of the intelligence reflected in the September dossier wastherefore of great importance.

Immediately prior to the document’s publication, according to a Guardian/ICM poll 65% of voters voiced their preparedness to back a war against Iraqprovided that the dossier showed reasonable evidence of Saddam’s acquisi-tion of new chemical, biological or nuclear weapons (Travis, 2002b). Yet,despite headlines from a number of newspapers warning that British interestsin the Mediterranean were just 45 minutes away from attack (Ralph, 2005:23),10 in the final week of September support for military action dropped to just33% (Travis, 2002c), indicating that the majority of people had been clearlyunimpressed by the evidence put forward.11 In other words, despite Blair’srearticulation of the Iraqi threat, the majority of the British public were still notprepared to accept that the situation required a military response.12

Likewise, the PLP and the Cabinet continued to display a significant level ofscepticism. Of the more high profile sceptics, former foreign secretary RobinCook rejected Blair’s claim that containment was not and could not work.Cook’s support for the continuation of containment was based on his consid-eration of the evidence over Iraqi WMD. As Kampfner (2004: 341) points out,during his time as foreign secretary Cook had seen all the intelligence reportsmade available to Blair. And, while Cook readily acknowledged the diffi-culty of receiving detailed and reliable intelligence from Iraq, he nonethelessconcluded that the September dossier did not provide ‘any recent and alarm-ing’ intelligence to suggest that Saddam posed an increased threat (Kampfner,2004: 341–342). Similarly, although Clare Short, then secretary of state forinternational development, is said to have agreed with Blair that the contain-ment policy was ‘wrong’, she opposed military action against Iraq on the self-same grounds as Cook, accusing the prime minister of having put forward aseries of exaggerations (Bluth, 2004: 878–879; Kampfner, 2004: 342).


10 Part 1, Chapter 3 of the government dossier on Iraq, entitled ‘The Current Position: 1998–2002’, states that‘the Iraqi military are able to deploy weapons within 45 minutes of a decision to do so’ (Foreign &Commonwealth Office, 2002: 17).

11 Set against this, however, the level of opposition to war had still not returned to the 50% peak recorded inAugust. And, indeed, immediately after the publication of the dossier opposition to military action actu-ally fell by 2%. What this shows is the growing number of undecided people. Again, this is mainlyaccounted for by a high level of distrust in Saddam’s renewed pledge to cooperate with UN weaponsinspectors, with only 13% of the electorate saying that they believed the Iraqi leader (Travis, 2002b).

12 In October 2002, the level of support inside Britain for a military attack on Iraq did rise sharply to 42%(Travis, 2002c). This, however, did not reflect any specific threat perception concerning Iraq, but, in thewake of the terrorist attack in Bali, a general sense of danger all around from Al-Qaeda and the like(Kampfner, 2004: 226).



Although, largely through the September dossier, the prime minister furthertried to argue that the Iraqi regime posed such an increased danger (greateractual WMD capabilities, coupled with human rights abuses and a link toterrorism) that military measures were necessary in replacing the existingpolicy of containment, public opinion in Britain, together with the opinions ofBlair’s own Labour Party and Cabinet colleagues, did not reflect an intersub-jective establishment of means over the situation. Profound mistrust towardsthe Iraqi leader inclined both audiences towards their continuing acceptanceof the ‘securityness’ of the situation. But, an apparent lack of new and credibleintelligence maintained the majority’s opposition to the extraordinaryness ofthe means proposed. Thus, as with the March–September (2002) period, thesituation was not so much that rhetorical securitization had failed but morethat active securitization had still not succeeded.

(Re)Identification and Mobilization: October 2002–March 2003

In his resignation speech to the House of Commons on 17 March 2003,13 Cookmade clear that he could not ‘support a war without international agreementor domestic support’ (quoted in Kennedy-Pipe & Vickers, 2007: 206). As withthe general public, Blair recognized the value of receiving the (moral) sup-port of other countries, especially France. If Britain was backed at the inter-national level, then British public opinion and opinion within the LabourParty and the Cabinet would follow. Additionally, cooperation on the part ofParis was seen as vital in also securing possible (moral) support at the supra-national (UN) level. Thus, from October 2002 the prime minister’s attentionsalso turned abroad.

Blair knew full well that regime change had no proper legal foundation,and that war against Iraq therefore could only be justified by Baghdad’smaterial breach of UN Security Council Resolution 687 (Ralph, 2005: 20). TheFrench tended to agree with some of the new intelligence contained in theSeptember dossier, but Paris was nonetheless unconvinced of an increasedlevel of danger from Saddam’s regime. Kampfner’s (2004: 208) citing of one‘senior European official’ is most illuminating in this respect:

We know that in terms of the nuclear programme there was nothing of importance. Anyassertion to the contrary was a pure lie. We knew they had ballistics. They had someremaining capacity. On biological and chemical weapons we know the Iraqi’s attemptedto get it. But we had no indication, no presumption that they had the capacity. It’s onething to have the elements, the ingredients and the precursors. There was no indicationabout the weaponisation of those elements. There was even less evidence about theability to deliver weapons we didn’t think they had.


13 Cook resigned as leader of the House of Commons and lord president of the council.



Nevertheless, as Freedman (2004: 29) points out, the intelligence on WMDwas designed not only to build a case for war, but also to expose ‘Iraqi decep-tion’. In addition, Saddam’s cheating and often blatant disregard for pre-vious UN resolutions was of concern for the Security Council. The Frenchwere prepared to accept a resolution that linked Iraq’s non-compliance withResolution 687 with the threat of military action, but had also made cleartheir opposition to ‘automaticity’: a single resolution linking further inspec-tions to war.

UN Security Council Resolution 1441, passed on 8 November 2002, stipu-lated not only that Iraq should allow weapons inspectors back, but also thatit should provide a complete disclosure of WMD activities past and present.In this regard, ‘false statements or omissions’ constituted a material breach,and thus necessitated, accorded to articles 12 and 13, the Security Councilconvening immediately to ‘consider the situation’. The resolution made clearthat the Security Council had ‘repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face seriousconsequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations’.However, this fell short of the ‘all necessary means’ contained in Resolution678 in 1990 (Kampfner, 2004: 218–220; Bluth, 2004: 879; Freedman, 2004: 29).

The preamble of Resolution 1441 states that the Security Council is cog-nizant of ‘the threat that Iraq’s non-compliance with Council resolutions andproliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles posesto international peace and security’. The preamble goes on to deplore ‘the factthat Iraq has not provided an accurate, full, final, and complete disclosure . . . of all aspects of its programmes’, and, further, that ‘Iraq repeatedlyobstructed immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access’ to designatedsites. Resolution 1441 defines Iraq’s failure to provide the necessary dis-closure of its WMD capabilities as a very real danger, but, again, a dangerthat can be tackled by the readmission of UN weapons inspectors.

Ahead of UNMOVIC head Hans Blix’s first report to the Security Council,Britain’s Coalition Information Centre (CIC)14 had been tasked by Blair’spress secretary Alistair Campbell to come up with a new document full ofSaddam’s human rights and other abuses. Upon its release, however, whatcame to be known as the ‘dodgy dossier’ was found to have plagiarized exist-ing reports on Iraq, and, according to Glen Rangwala, a lecturer in politics atthe University of Cambridge who identified the plagiarism,15 showed that theUK ‘does not have any independent sources of information on Iraq’s internalpolicies’ (quoted in Kampfner, 2004: 266). The dodgy dossier was a disasterfor Blair and only reinforced the public’s sense that there was no case for war.


14 The CIC was the ad hoc war press office set up for the war in Afghanistan. Although closed down for aperiod, the office was reopened to assist in selling the war in Iraq.

15 Rangwala told Channel Four news that four of the nineteen pages had been copied almost wholly from theInternet.



Delivering his report on 27 January 2003, Blix announced that ‘Iraq appearsnot to have come to a genuine acceptance . . . of the disarmament which wasdemanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of theworld’, and went on to note ‘disturbing incidents and harassment of inspec-tors inside Iraq’ (quoted in Kampfner, 2004: 258). Blair believed that Blix’scomments made a second resolution declaring Saddam in material breach allthe more likely. However, Blix’s second and third reports (14 February and 2March 2003), all but dashed hopes of such an outcome. In his Februaryassessment, Blix reported that progress was being made (for the French espe-cially this was all the evidence that was needed to suggest that the inspectorsshould be given more time to accomplish their task), while in the Marchreport Blix confirmed that Iraqi cooperation had increased since January, thatno evidence had been found of biological laboratories, and that the country’sal-Samoud weapons stockpile had been partially destroyed. In the light ofthese reports, French President Jacques Chirac declared France’s unequivocalopposition to a second resolution, making it quite clear that ‘there are nogrounds for waging war in order to achieve the goals we have set ourselves,that is to disarm Iraq’ (quoted in Kampfner, 2004: 287).16

Growing scepticism within the UN Security Council over British and USclaims concerning Iraqi WMD was also reflected on the streets of Britain andelsewhere. On 15 February, millions of people in cities all around the worldprotested against a possible second Gulf War. The largest demonstrationtook place in London, where organizers claim that some two million peoplegathered in the capital’s Hyde Park.

Nevertheless, already committed alongside the USA to invasion, andbacked by the opinion of the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, that a ma-terial breach of Resolution 687, as determined by the Security Council inResolution 1441, revived authority to use force under Resolution 678, Blairtook his case to Parliament. Campbell reveals that Blair’s closest Cabinet col-leagues had ‘severe moments of doubt’ over the invasion, and that DefenceSecretary John Reid and Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott looked ‘physi-cally sick’ when the Cabinet met on the day before the Commons vote(Woodward, 2007). Nevertheless, on 18 March 2003, the prime ministersecured the approval of the legislature to send British troops to war againstIraq. Despite a substantial Labour rebellion, an anti-war motion was defeatedby 396 votes to 217. Rounding on Liberal Democrats, who opposed militarymeans, Blair retorted that Britain could not afford to back down in the face ofa ‘clear and present danger’, and that it was time ‘to show that at the momentof decision we have the courage to do the right thing’ (Jones, 2003).

Following the release of the September 2002 dossier, Blair continued to tryto persuade both domestically and internationally/supranationally that the


16 A second resolution was indeed rejected by the Security Council on 14 March.



use of force was the only way to deal effectively with Iraq’s WMD. However,opinion polls from late 2002 through to early 2003 again made clear that themajority of the British public were opposed to the use of force against theIraqi regime (O’Malley, 2007: 9). Indeed, the very fact that weapons inspec-tors were allowed back in was proof to many that the situation could be dealtwith short of war. Thus, the prime minister went to war without the moralsupport of the masses.

As previously stated, public opinion was certainly seen as being able toinfluence Labour MPs and the Cabinet. However, even in the face of suchhuge domestic opposition, the prime minister felt that the masses wouldeventually be won over. This stemmed partly from Blair’s unswerving beliefin his own ability to control events (Dyson, 2006; Stothard, 2003) and partlyfrom the assumption that the British public would inevitably swing fullybehind the war in support for ‘our boys’ once the latter had been deployed(O’Malley, 2007: 12) – a kind of ex post facto ‘active’ securitization. This sug-gests that although the moral support of the masses may well be important interms of the intersubjective establishment of threat (stage of identification), itis perhaps less so when it comes to the intersubjective establishment ofmeans (stage of mobilization). That is to say, provided that at least some levelof agreement exists concerning the danger itself, potential damage done togovernments can be limited through a successful military campaign.

Similarly, the government was well aware of the importance of the moralsupport of other EU member-states and the UN Security Council. Blair wassure that backing at the international/supranational level would have aprofound impact on the opinion of both the public and Parliament alike, par-ticularly with regard to the legal justification for war. Although countriessuch as France came to share Blair’s concerns about Saddam’s clear obfusca-tion (maybe the Iraqi regime really did have something to hide), by the endof January 2003 Paris’s lack of willingness to resort to the use of force wasmore than apparent.

Unlike the masses and the UN Security Council, although to begin withequally sceptical about the deployment of British troops, the BritishParliament was eventually convinced of the necessity to use military force byvirtue of Blair’s rearticulation of threat. Two main reasons arguably accountfor this: The first is that many Labour MPs, although privately more than con-cerned about such a course of action, also came to realize the longer-termeffects of potential inaction. Wishing to avoid the disasters of the 1980s whenthe Labour Party was seen as incompetent when it came to matters of nationalsecurity, Blair ‘sought to prevent his government from the taint of failing totake security threats seriously’ (Kennedy-Pipe & Vickers, 2007: 215). Thesecond is that, in addition to Blair’s belief in his own ability to control events,the prime minister also had control over information/intelligence. Blair selec-tively presented intelligence information in order both to strengthen existing




support for war and to persuade the sceptics (O’Malley, 2007: 10–13):Although 139 Labour MPs voted against war, the majority of the party’s back-benchers supported the prime minister. While successive Conservative gov-ernments had mostly tended to support the USA and interventionist policies,government intelligence is nonetheless said to directly have also influencedthe decision of many leading Conservatives (O’Malley, 2007: 12–13).

Conclusion

In instances of institutionalized securitization, such as 1998’s OperationDesert Fox, as audience the general public is for the most part excluded from the securitizing process. The government and/or the military alreadypossess the required amount of legitimacy (or are presented with the strate-gic imperative) to act without the acquiescence of the masses. Otherwise,however, there is an assumption that, in liberal democracies especially, themasses enjoy some kind of role. In this article, largely through the case ofBritain’s decision to join with the USA in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, I haveattempted to show just what role the British general public – and, indeed,other relevant audiences – played.

In some processes of securitization, the securitizing actor will need the con-currence of the general public in order to achieve the legitimacy to voice secu-rity concerns. The case of the Popish Plot showed how Oates and Tonge wereenabled to speak security through the acceptance of their ‘truth claims’ by theProtestant masses. But, speaking security is not the same as doing security:only the king and the parliament were able to sanction the means necessaryto deal with the supposed plotters.

In other processes of securitization, actors, in particular governments andother political elites, are already imbued with the necessary amount of legit-imacy to speak security. The general public accepts that, in many cases,politicians have been elected in order, among other things, to voice suchconcerns on their behalf. The concurrence of the masses is still importantinasmuch as it gives political leaders moral support. But, as the case of theUK’s decision to invade Iraq makes clear, desirable though moral supportmay be, what matters ultimately is the formal support of institutions(Parliament) that enable the employment of sufficient countermeasures.

The British government led by Prime Minister Tony Blair was able to con-vince the general public, Blair’s own Labour Party and Cabinet, and the UNSecurity Council that Saddam Hussein’s possession of WMD constituted adanger, and that something therefore had to be done to address Iraq’snuclear, biological and chemical weapons programmes. To begin with, how-ever, none of these audiences agreed with the British prime minister that the




measures necessary to deal with the Iraqi threat warranted a shift from astrengthening of the existing policy of containment (through the readmissionof weapons inspectors). That is to say, although the threat itself had beenintersubjectively established, the means to respond to it had not. Thus, Blair’sframing of the situation underwent several rearticulations: from an initialemphasis simply on Saddam’s retention of (potential) WMD capabilities(March briefing document and unpublished dossier), through numerousspeeches devoted to Iraq, but especially through the publications of theSeptember and ‘dodgy’ dossiers, the prime minister later sought also toemphasize Saddam’s intransigence and duplicity, the links between Iraq andAl-Qaeda, and the Iraqi leader’s tyranny and human rights abuses. While therelease of the dossiers failed to significantly shift public opinion, it did, how-ever, succeed in ‘clawing back’ support from many of the Labour party’s left-wing sceptics: ‘the unusual release of information succeeded in preventingthe agenda of many of those opposing the war from dominating the debate.Without this information many MPs might have moved to the anti-war sideof the debate’ (O’Malley, 2007: 13).

If the concept of securitization is defined as the acceptance of the label ofsecurity together with the kind of extraordinary means the actor proposes,then in the case I have presented here the securitization of Saddam’s WMDnecessarily failed until the moment the prime minister gained the (formal)support of Parliament for the military invasion of Iraq. What precedes this should therefore be viewed simply as a series of ‘securitizing moves’.Alternatively, if securitization is defined as the acceptance of the label ofsecurity only, although the prime minister had arguably established IraqiWMD as ‘security’ some time in advance of the House of Commons vote, the‘logic’ of securitization in the military sector was nonetheless, and neces-sarily, conspicuously absent – ‘doing’ security, violization, if you like, wasitself yet to be endorsed. What this shows is that although the stage of identi-fication is a fundamental part of the securitization process (rhetorical securi-tization), the success or failure of security policy (active securitization) restsfirmly in the stage of mobilization.

* Paul Roe is Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations andEuropean Studies (IRES) at Central European University, Budapest. His book EthnicViolence and the Societal Security Dilemma was published by Routledge in 2005.

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Securitzation and Irak PAUL ROE